Electric bike demo rides at Johnny's Sporting goods

Every Saturday, Johnny's Sporting Goods in Carrboro has something going on. This coming weekend 4/5/08, they'll have a taco cart and garden sale.

If the weather is good, we're going to bring the bikes out for people to test ride. We'll have electric bicycles, folding bicycles, and a sports utility bicycle or two. We'll also bring along a few of the small items like flash flags, cup holders for your bike, I-ride stereos, and other doodads to enhance your biking experience!

We plan to be there from 10AM-1PM. Johnny's is at 901 W Main St in Carrboro, and the store is in the back.

Where art thou hub motors?

Demand on the electric bikes and kits has been beyond our expectations, so our stock has gotten very low. There's nothing like being in the business of selling electric bikes.... and having not much left to sell! We have a group of the

eZee kits

on backorder, due to arrive now in early May, but we've already pre-sold most of them. If you want to get your claim on one of these, we suggest you order now. As a bonus for pre-ordering, we'll give you the old price, rather than the new upgraded kit price (a difference of $30-40). We also have more Crystalyte gear on the way, and a new addition will be the top-notch BionX hub motor kits.

These are the only kits we will be selling that have regenerative braking, and as a bonus, these are made in North America (Canada, to be precise)! They also have an advanced monitor and display system that is much nicer than any other kit on the market.

We also have an order in for some of the FalconEV kits, including the Forsen, Dragonfly, and Bull. And, last but not least, we have our shipment of Cycle 9 electric bikes in production, to arrive in May also.

So, within a few months, we hope to be stocked back up, unless the popularity of this stuff continues to skyrocket and we sell out again...

"Growing" batteries with a virus!

Can a virus make a better battery for electric bikes and electric cars?

That's what MIT researcher

Angela Belcher

is working on.

She is developing means to engineer new materials by "programming" bacteriophage viruses. She programs them genetically, and this causes them to produce proteins in particular configurations to optimize the properties of the anodes and cathodes in the batteries. She is using that programming to increase energy density, and to make thin, flexible battery cells that might be used as materials in clothing, for example.

I saw her talk today at the annual

Institute for Biomedical Engineering meeting

, and she not only described new battery technologies, but a host of other applications for her work, including higher-density solar arrays.

She first described using the phages to synthesize lithium-cobalt batteries. While that is technically exciting, for electric vehicle use, the cobalt chemistries have had safety concerns in the past, so may not see much use in electric vehicles. But, she is also looking at integrating new chemistries based on Lithium-Iron Phosphates and similar. And she happens to be friends with one of the inventors of the Li-Fe-PO4 chemistry.

Sometimes it can get a little depressing that all the electric bike related products seem to be made in asia, and very few in North America. But, at least we have some great researchers like Angela, innovating and developing new technologies like this that may help address the significant energy challenges that our country faces.

Article in the local student newspaper about Cycle 9

Today,

we were featured

in

The Daily Tarheel

, the student run newspaper for UNC Chapel Hill.

Riding an electric bike is like riding a regular bicycle, except with bionic legs. At least that's what Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton thinks."It was a fun little thing to ride," Chilton said with a laugh. "It was interesting because it worked that the more you pedaled, the more that the electrical assist would come into play."

Read More....

Hurray, we now have an online store!

Cycle 9 now has an online store, please have a look and let us know what you think.

Unfortunately, we are already sold out on the eZee hub motors. That's a nice setup, so we'll be sure to get more, hopefully they will arrive early April.

In other news, we now are carrying the Downtube folding bikes, for local sales. These are the bikes we took with us on a recent bike tour of Tuscany, Italy, and they're great bikes. However, we're only selling those locally, due to an agreement with Downtube.

We also have the Anyrider line of folding bikes on the way. These are a great, basic, low cost folding bike for someone on the go.